Willow Smith Took A 'Couple Of Years' To Forgive Will Smith Over Early Fame

posted by Emily Lee -
Dec 4, 2018

Willow Smith is opening up about a difficult situation she experienced with her parents, especially her dad, Will Smith. During Monday’s episode of Facebook Watch’s Red Table Talk, Willow spoke with her mom, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and grandma, Adrienne Banfield-Jones,about what happened after she released her first hit single "Whip My Hair" in 2010.

Willow was just 10 years old when the song came out and she's been candid about her struggle with the overwhelming amount of attention she received as a result. As Willow tells it, her parents didn't take her discomfort seriously enough at the time. "I definitely had to forgive you and daddy for that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing. It was mostly daddy because he was so harsh at certain times," Willow said. "It was a couple of years, honestly. Trying to regain trust for not feeling like I was being listened to or like no one cared how I felt."

Not only did Willow have to forgive her parents for being hard on, she learned she also had to forgive herself for the very same thing. "And I had to forgive myself because I felt guilty because everyone is trying to make me better, trying to make my dream. But I didn’t really understand what my dream entailed," Willow explained. "It was after that whole ‘Whip My Hair’ thing and I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this gray area of, ‘Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?'"

"After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they wanted me to finish my album," she continued. "And I was like, I’m not gonna do that. And after all of that kinda settled down and it was like a kind of lull, I was just listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, andI was cutting myself."

Willow said she “totally lost my sanity” following her overnight success. "I never talk about it because it was such a short weird point in my life. But you have to pull yourself out of it."